SMETHPORT — Efforts are underway by the McKean County Board of Elections to rectify an error on the ballots for the general election.
A letter provided to The Era on Tuesday by Elections Director Brett Perry stated that any absentee or mail-in ballots sent out with a postmark of Oct. 13 or earlier contain the error.
“These ballots instructed voters to ‘vote for not more than 3’ candidates on the 2023 county commissioners contest. This was an error,” the letter stated, with the sentence both in bold print and underlined.
“Voters are permitted to vote for not more than 2 candidates for the county commissioners contest.”
The letter explained that new, revised ballots will be sent out by Oct. 31 to all people who requested an absentee or mail-in ballot.
“The new revised ballot will be distinguishable from the erroneous ballot by a colored stripe at the top of the front page of the ballot, as well as the instructions to ‘vote for not more than 2’ for the county commissioners contest,” the letter continued.
Anyone who has the incorrect ballot, but has not yet voted, is asked to disregard it and wait to receive the new one to return their vote.
“For those voters who have already returned absentee/mail-in ballots, please re-vote the new revised ballot you will receive and return it per the included instructions,” the letter stated.
The letter ended with an apology from county officials, who said Monday that the mistake was caused by human error.
“The McKean County Elections Office and the McKean County Board of Elections would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” the letter stated. “Every vote is of the utmost importance to any election and we will do everything possible to make sure every voter is represented.”
In Pennsylvania, elections are overseen by the Department of State. A request to the department regarding the process of correcting the error echoed the efforts that are underway locally.
“How a county remediates an error like this depends on considerations like the exact nature of the error, how much time the county has to fix it, and how many voters are impacted,” said Amy Gulli, director of the Office of Communications and Press for the Department of State.
“In cases where an error impacts mail ballots several weeks before an election, the county can notify voters that replacement ballots will be issued to affected voters,” she said. “Such a remedy involves putting in place a process to segregate the original ballots from the replacement ballots, if one or both are returned by the voters.”
The commissioners’ race is the only one on the ballot that is under contention at the county level. The candidates are Mary Ann Wilder and James M. Hilyer, Democrats, and Carol Duffy and Thomas Kreiner, Republicans. The other county-level races are unopposed.
